TURNING THE TIDE AGAINST WATER SCARCITY

Those who call water scarcity the challenge of the century are not exaggerating. The recent debate over a proposal to recycle waste water for drinking purposes in Australia, the drying of large portions of massive river basins like Lake Chad in Africa and the Aral Sea in Central Asia, the millions of people who struggle to grow crops on drought-stricken farms in Asia, Africa and in the Americas, all reflect the importance of conserving and making more productive use of our water resources, writes Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Improving the food situation is fundamental to fighting hunger and improving lives on every continent. This means that to turn the tide against water scarcity, farmers must find ways to produce more food with proportionally less water. It takes 1000-2000 litres of water to produce one kilo of wheat and 13 000-15000 litres to produce the same quantity of grain-fed beef. By comparison, the amount of daily drinking water required by one person is estimated at a mere two to five litres. And yet each day, we \"eat\" an average of 2000 litres of water. Thus the effective daily consumption of water per person is 1000 times more than the apparent consumption through drinking. Without water, we can not produce; and without it we simply cannot eat. The planet is thirsty because it is hungry.

TOWARDS BINDING REGULATION OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS

Politicians have not taken the necessary measures to regulate the negative impacts of rapid economic globalisation, writes Gunhild Orstavik, senior adviser at the Norwegian Forum for Environment and Development (ForUM). In this article, the author writes that there are no international agreements that effectively regulate the activities of corporations today, although the United Nations is working to establish such regulations. In the meantime, the UN encourages states to draw up national guidelines. ForUM\'s goal is the establishment of legally-binding international guidelines with built-in mechanisms for sanctions. This would increase the pressure on the worst offenders that have not been influenced by the UN Global Compact, OECD guidelines, or other voluntary initiatives to change their behaviour, and which for various reasons have not been targeted by criminal laws. Further work on this in the UN should be given high priority, and at the same time states should respond to the challenge from the UN to work out national guidelines. The more countries that have national guidelines, the greater will be the impact on global environmental and development problems.

WASHINGTON: A DEAD END

\'\'Will there continue to be just one superpower?\'\', asks Mario Soares, ex-president and ex-prime minister of Portugal. In this article, Soares writes that September 11 showed the world the vulnerability of the US \'\'empire\'\' in an absolutely unforeseeable way. Is the US about to attack Iran, albeit through its proxy Israel? In the UN Security Council a \'\'No\'\' front has emerged, spurred on by Russia and China. Russian president Vladimir Putin allows himself to openly criticise Bush\'s policy, choosing to do so in the German city of Munich for the greatest resonance. China, as usual, continues to advance its expansionist policy, with such vast foreign reserves in US Treasury bonds --and dollars-- that it could at any moment wreak havoc on the US economy. The various countries of Latin America --from the most radical to the reformists, and including pseudo-allies like Colombia-- are in the process of gradually escaping, for the first time, from the control of their giant cousin to the North.

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES MAJOR FORCE IN FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT

The extent and pace of growth of foreign direct investment (FDI) from emerging economies heralds a new role for these countries in international production systems and the world economy as a whole, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In this article, the author writes that FDI from the South is also opening up new sources of finance, technology, and management know-how, critical ingredients for economic development. From the perspective of developing host economies, FDI from other developing countries presents a potentially broader range of sources of capital, technology, and management skills. South-South FDI has several advantages over North-South investment, including the fact that the technologies and business models of developing-country TNCs often have a lot in common. The emergence of new sources of FDI requires attention from policy makers and investment promoters in countries at all levels of development. In order to maximise the development impact of this it is important for officials and experts from both developing and developed countries to exchange views and share experiences.

MEN WILL NEVER BE FREE UNTIL WOMEN ENJOY FULL GENDER EQUALITY

Gender equality is a challenge to all men and women who want to create a just world. During the struggle against apartheid we learnt that white people will never be free until black people are free. Similarly, men will not enjoy full freedom if women do not enjoy full gender equality, writes Kumi Naidoo, Secretary-General of CIVICUS, the Worldwide Alliance for Citizen Participation. In this article, the author writes that gender equality is central to meeting the various challenges that humanity faces. Like all social challenges, the struggle for gender equality must be equally shared by men and women. I and all fellow men will have to decide whether we are part of the problem or part of the solution. However, the leadership role of women in the fight for gender equality must be recognised and asserted at all times. Just as it would be impossible for someone who has not experienced racism to fully understand the totality of racial oppression, so too while men can be supportive of the struggle for gender equality, they can never understand the totality of gender injustice. For men and women alike it is important to recognise that we are all products of intense gender socialisation. Only once we accept this can it become clear that it takes more than a great effort to understand how we men have been socialised in a predominantly sexist world. Consequently, it will take men a lifetime to fully understand the impact of gender inequality let alone dealing with it.

THE SINISTER NEW BIO-FUEL ALLIANCE

The Landless Movement of Brazil and the international organisation Via Campesina condemn the new initiative of President George Bush, who in his upcoming trip to Latin America hopes to seduce and co-opt the countries of the region into becoming major producers of bio-fuels for export to the US, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) and Via Campesina Brazil. In this article, Stedile writes that a diabolical alliance of the oil companies, the transnationals that control agricultural and GM seeds, and the automobile industry, in order to maintain the current consumerist model of the first world and its profit levels, are trying to convince the governments of the South to concentrate their agriculture in bio-fuel production to supply the cars of the first world. The new US plan would be a tragedy for tropical agriculture and would transform major areas of our best lands into monoculture tracts, aggravate the loss of biodiversity, and reduce the amount of land dedicated to food production, forcing millions of peasants around the world from their land and into the swelling slums of the big cities.

AND THE WORST PICTURE WINS

Compared with Scorsese\'s other films, The Departed was artistically tepid and lacking in the revelation of human motivations that he has such a great gift for, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that the image of the great director, smiling, with the golden figurine in his hand aroused in me one of the most disquieting emotions that exists: embarrassment for someone else. I cannot believe that Scorsese considers this latest movie to be a memorable work. To do so would be an insult to his intelligence. For this reason, his smiling and his wielding of the little statue struck me with a sense of corrosive embarrassment for a man required by circumstances to put on a big smile when he should know (or does know) that his prize is an offense to the intelligence of the others, to art, and to justice. It is no more than a commercial venture and a poor exercise in film making.

NEPAL: WAR OVER BUT PEACE NOT YET AT HAND

If all goes well, in the next few weeks Nepal\'s Maoist insurgents will join the government of Prime Minister GP Koirala, writes Kunda Dixit, editor and publisher of the Nepali Times newspaper in Kathmandu. In this analysis, Dixit writes that with the restoration of democracy, it was as if the lid came off and all pent-up grievances and demands of groups that had been marginalised or excluded from decision-making wanted their say. The latest complication is an eruption of demands for fair representation and self-rule from many of Nepal\'s 103 ethnic and caste groups. Despite the peace process, Nepal is in ferment. There are strikes, shutdowns, and highways blockades every day by various groups. The unrest has caused a crippling shortage of fuel. The government has held several rounds of negotiations with representatives of these groups, but has not been able to stem the agitation. As the first anniversary of the victory of People Power approaches in Nepal, there is no doubt that a compromise has to be reached and quickly before another fire ignites from the embers of ten years of war.

EUROPE MUST REACT

The world remains dangerous and exasperating in this first phase of 2007. Violence in its many manifestations continues to dominate daily life on every continent, as consumerism, even in extremely poor and disadvantaged countries, is expanding, and with it irresponsibility, the loss of values, corruption at every level, and a mode of life in the mere present, without reference to the past or a path forward into the future, writes Mario Soares, ex-president and ex-prime minister of Portugal. In this analysis Soares writes that global public opinion, the universal awareness of the threats that hang over our planet, and the international disorder that has taken root and proliferated before our very eyes, are beginning to seriously worry the people on every continent. The war in Iraq, which sharply divided the conscience of the world, finally dealt an irreversible shock to US public opinion. President Bush, now on the defensive on the domestic front, seems intent on driving forward with the war in Iraq and hopes to send more troops. Nothing has changed in his belligerent stance towards Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is to be hoped that the US Congress, responsive to American opinion, will be able to block his plans and set out a new foreign policy to restore the lost credibility of the US in the world.

SADDAM, YOUTUBE, AND THE CITIZEN SURVEILLANCE EFFECT

The flip side of the ubiquitous spy camera tracking our every movement in department stores, government offices, and corporate headquarters is \'\'inverse surveillance\'\', the private citizen\'s new-found ability to invade the privacy of public figures who have so long and with such impunity invaded their privacy, writes Mark Sommer, who hosts the internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\' (www.aworldofpossibilities.com) and directs the Mainstream Media Project. In this analysis, Sommer writes that nearly universal access to portable audio and video recording devices can now catch a politician\'s random moment of indiscretion or conspiratorial whisper and disseminate it to a global public to the everlasting embarrassment of the subject of scrutiny. What does this radical transparency do to leadership itself when, taken out of context, almost any act can appear incriminating? On the one hand, micro cameras and recording devices in the hands of ordinary people give them the power of a citizen\'s arrest with a potential impact that extends far beyond throwing someone in jail. In that sense, it is an essential counterweight to ever greater concentration of power and surveillance in the hands of elites, a levelling device that places public figures on notice that they can never be assured that malfeasance will not be discovered and tried in the court of public exposure. It\'s a power whose potency even those wielding it may not yet fully realise.

IS THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM ALREADY OLD NEWS

Despite the success of the seventh World Social Forum (WSF) held last month in Nairobi, media coverage of the massive event continues to wane, in sharp contrast to the prominence the event was given in its first few years, writes Mario Lubetkin, Director-General of the IPS news agency. In this article, the author writes that the decision to hold the next central forum in 2009 and leave 2008 for protest actions in various parts of the planet effectively postpones the work of building an image of a World Forum that generates serious, realistic alternative proposals in response to the major, dangerous problems that affect humanity. The silence that may fall over the forum for such a long period, despite the local and regional forums set for coming months and years, could aggravate this tendency and as a result generate even more disillusionment for many of those who are betting on the forum and its defiant motto: \'\'Another world is possible.\'\'

GREEN TRADE AND THE WTO

Sustainable development should be the cornerstone of our approach to globalisation and of the global governance architecture that we create, writes Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In this article, Lamy writes that the Doha Round of trade negotiations contains a promise to the environment to allow for a more efficient allocation of resources including natural ones on a global scale through a continued reduction of obstacles to trade (tariffs and subsidies). But it also includes a promise to ensure greater harmony between the WTO and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs): a promise to tear down the barriers to trade in clean technologies and services; as well as a promise to reduce the environmentally-harmful agricultural subsidies. The world must forge ahead with these negotiations as fast as it possibly can. Not because the negotiations are going to save the world\'s environment. But because they are the very modest start that the international community has agreed to make to address environmental challenges through the prism of trade. A failure of these negotiations would strengthen the hand of all those who argue that economic growth should proceed unchecked, that economic growth is supreme and need not take account of the environment. Trade, and indeed the WTO, must be made to deliver sustainable development. They are starting to.

FREE TRADE IS OVER (IF THE PEOPLE WANT IT TO BE)

The US and South Korea are working around the clock to sign the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KorUS FTA), which would become the second largest trade deal after NAFTA, writes Christine Ahn, a policy analyst with the Korea Policy Institute and Oakland Institute and a member of the Korean Americans for Fair Trade coalition. In this article, Ahn writes that Wall Street corporations and South Korean chaebols are salivating at the opportunity to increase their portion of 72 billion dollars in business the two countries trade annually. Normally, such a trade deal would breeze through the halls of the US Congress and the Korean National Assembly. But times have changed. The public discourse on free trade is no longer just about the ability of corporations to move their capital freely across borders. It\'s about the anger and frustration of middle and working class people who see their security dwindling to further line the pockets of white-collar business executives. That anger can then express itself during elections, ousting officials mired in the rhetoric of the last century. Free trade is over, and hopefully the social justice movements in the United States will unite with the energising movements in South Korea to stop this antiquated regime.

THE WARNED

Human beings have never been as thoroughly warned about the gravity of their actions against nature as today. Hair-raising data, apocalyptic predictions, frightening evidence follow us each day to announce that disaster is drawing closer and close, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that never before has the thinking species had the responsibility to fight for its own survival on the planet where the miracle of life was made real. Humanity has come to a crossroads with its awareness that it is even possible to calculate how much time is left for action in this third act. Intelligence has been the hallmark of this species capable of lifting itself above the others. Today only its extraordinary capacity of thought and reason can save it, although at the rate things are going, with so few world leaders and individuals willing not only to think but to take drastic action, everything seems to indicate that the bells will ring and we will not be able to ask for whom: they ring for all of us, for our children and theirs.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: FROM WORDS TO ACTION

Seven World Social Forums (WSF) have been enough for the dynamic of civil society to complete a cycle and initiate a stage of profound change -- in contrast to the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has been held 37 times, writes Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of IPS and a member of the WSF International Committee. In this analysis, Savio writes that Nairobi was the last forum in keeping with the original conception of the WSF. The entrance of more radical forces into the WSF International Council in recent years has caused a very important change of direction. As a result, next year the forum will not be an occasion for meeting and debate but rather a mobilisation. During the days the WEF will be held in Davos, local events will be staged throughout the world by participating organisations, including marches and demonstrations. Even the WSF International Council has decided to meet in Germany on the occasion of demonstrations against the G8, which will happen in Berlin in June. This is a new path, one that is closer to that of the social movements that are becoming the driving forces of Global Civil Society.

A CRUCIAL YEAR FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION

It may sound dramatic, but it may be now or never for the EU, writes Joaquin Roy, \'\'Jean Monnet\'\' professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami. In this analysis Roy writes that this will be a decisive year for the organisation: it is now fifty years since it took its first daring step with the Rome Treaty of March 1957, which transformed the initial European Steel and Coal Community, formed in 1951, by incorporating the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. It has now been five years since the adoption of the euro by 300 million citizens in the thirteen countries of the EU as well as a handful of mini-states that had used the currencies of member states. The euro was a success in all basic monetary operations. Although the dollar remains dominant in terms of the setting of prices and tallying debt, as an exchange currency the euro is on the verge of surpassing it. However, while these two ambitious moves proved highly successful, the warnings made simultaneously about the need for institutional reform of an organisation used to dealing with fifteen more-or-less collegial members have not been heeded. Unfortunately the Constitution was derailed halfway through the ratification process after rejection by Dutch and French voters. With the project on hold until more favourable conditions emerge, observers are now looking towards the German presidency of the EU in the current semester and the results of France\'s May elections. The energy of the former and the disposition of the new leadership in Paris will determine the future course of the EU.

THE SHIFTING POWER EQUATION

We are in the midst of a revolution in which power is moving from the centre to the periphery and vertical command and control structures are eroding, writes Klaus Schwab, founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, whose Annual Meeting in Davos will take place January 24-28. In this article, the author writes that today global trusteeship is needed more than ever since we have to confront so many global challenges simultaneously. The world has become a complex and dangerous place requiring urgent, effective mechanisms to address all the challenges in a proactive, comprehensive and systemic way. Recent events have highlighted the realities of global impotence. We are witnessing profound decay in the structures we have historically used to manage our world. We are witnessing the de-globalisation of a globalised world as the UN, the Bretton Woods organisations and many other multinational frameworks are struggling to keep up with changing global needs. This is made clear by our collective incapability to deal effectively with rogue states, with failed states, with terrorism and other events, from the collapse of the Doha trade talks to the crisis in Darfur. Existing global governance systems can no longer meet all the challenges of the 21st century in their present form, but reforms based just on prolonging the paradigms of the past will fail in our new flat world. What we need to do is connect, and reconnect, leaders from business, politics and civil society to form new coalitions to improve the state of our world and shape a new collective will.

WTO COMPROMISE ON AGRICULTURE WILL UNLOCK MAJOR TRADE BENEFITS

Many proposals have already been presented at the Doha Round Negotiations, but clearly what is on the table today is not enough to lead us to success. All parties need to make a greater contribution, starting with agriculture, writes Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation . In this article, the author writes that the US has to accept cuts in its subsidies beyond its current offer, as do the EU and the G-10. India and the G-33 countries also have to show flexibility. Indeed, if we are to reach a result, all Members have to show flexibility. No one is being asked to undertake disproportionate commitments, and certainly there is the flexibility to address for specific needs and concerns. With an additional effort we can unlock agriculture which in turn will open the last stage of talks on the other topics. This Round offers the largest cuts ever on tariffs on the industrial sector, which represents a large part of developed countries exports and holds the promise of reformed antidumping procedures to enhance transparency and predictability. For the first time ever it tackles fishery subsidies which increase capacities and contribute to the depletion of our oceans. It also goes deeper in opening telecommunications and financial, environmental, and a broad range of business services.

THE REFUGE OF REREADING

If reading a recently published book gives the taste of an encounter with the unknown, returning those one has read many times provides the slightly cowardly certainty of arriving at a safe harbour, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that returning to these old acquaintances also cures us of the deceptions that, echoing through the market, catapult us occasionally into the embrace of books that make us lament the nights invested in their pages, when we know perfectly well the years of our lives are far too few to read everything good and essential written by our fellow humans. Perhaps the most disagreeable of these sensations occurred while I was reading the Da Vinci Code, convinced that to be able to at least criticise it I had to plough through all 600 or so pages: for years and years I have not read anything so miserably written, ill-conceived, and artistically false. The dumb provocation of the establishment devised by Brown was so innocuous and bogus that the publishing industry could swallow it happily and turn it into a sales behemoth sweeping many areas of the market while pushing to the margin, if not beyond it, that which should always be at the front: literature.

DEATH PENALTY: TOWARDS A UNIVERSAL MORATORIUM

With passage of the United Nations Moratorium on Executions likely in the current General Assembly, we are on the verge of obtaining a major victory for humanity which the Non-violent and Transnational Radical Party and Hands Off Cain have been seeking for fourteen years, writes Elisabetta Zamparutti, curator of the annual report of Hands Off Cain, \'\'The Death Penalty in the World\", and a leader of the Radical Party. In this article, the author writes that after the execution of Hussein and through the moratorium campaign, Hands Off Cain and the Radical Party have succeeded in making everyone understand, even in the Arab world and beginning with the Cain of our time, the urgency of preventing a widening cycle of violence and war, in Iraq and elsewhere, which would have disastrous consequences. It was non-violent actions that were responsible for convincing the public of the urgency a measure like the UN moratorium and so accelerated the historic process of abolitionism. The startling drama and horror of the death penalty in the world today is to be found largely in the 98 percent of the world\'s 5000 years executions that are carried in totalitarian and repressive countries. It is because of the nameless and forgotten victims of the death penalty in these countries that a universal moratorium is so very important.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN AUSTRALIA, CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, CZECH EPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//: THE GREEN GOLD RUSH

The conundrum that has long obstructed progress on global warming and a broader transition from a petro-centric to a biocentric economy -- can environmental imperatives be addressed within a profit-driven economic system? -- may finally be giving way to a tidal wave of global green innovation, writes Mark Sommer, host of \'A World of Possibilities,\' an award-winning,internationally syndicated radio programme that can be heard at www.aworldofpossibilities.com. In this article, Sommer writes that November\'s flush of Democratic victories was less an endorsement of the party than a rejection of the oil-igarchy that has blocked effective action on a wide range of issues. In its wake, the pent-up demand for new products and services to serve a post-carbon economy may now begin to trigger a potent market-driven response from industry, academia, consumers, and after all others, policymakers. The greening of the global economy will likely be led not by the environmental activists whose persistence was so essential to raising initial public awareness but by some of the very corporate behemoths who were rightly criticised for their inaction and some of the very conservatives (though not of the Bush variety) who have long held that environmental goals and economic realities are innately incompatible.